Countries around the world are forcing people to stay at home in an attempt to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, leading to businesses shutting down and grinding economic activity to a halt.

Barclays and Citi were among the few banks so far to put an estimate on the eventual impact, warning of a 40% to 50% hit to profits and dividends.

"We expect the economic fallout from COVID-19 (coronavirus) to be as severe as the 2008-09 recession, but briefer," said Emmanuel Cau, Barclays European equity strategist.

Euro zone manufacturing activity collapsed last month as breaks in global supply chains crushed output, and the nosedive could worsen in coming months, a survey showed on Wednesday.

Companies listed on the pan-European STOXX 600 are expected to report a 21.9% decline in earnings in the second quarter, a deterioration in outlook from a drop of 14.9% forecast the week before. For the third quarter, analysts see a 15.4% fall, according to Refinitiv consensus forecasts.

Those forecasts could worsen, as some analysts are finding it difficult to make any prediction at this stage of the crisis.

(GRAPHIC: Global earnings growth forecasts start falling - )

Companies have been cutting or suspending dividends as their cash flows dry up.

Investment firm AJ Bell last week estimated that over 100 British firms have postponed or cancelled some 4.2 billion pounds ($5.2 billion) of dividend payments in March alone.

Britain's top banks halted dividend payments on Wednesday after pressure from the regulator to save their capital as a buffer against expected losses.

Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Standard Chartered and the British arm of Spain's Santander halted payouts for 2020 in a co-ordinated industry response to a request from the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) on Tuesday.

The lenders were also asked to halt any payouts for 2019 that had not yet been paid. They were due to pay out over 8 billion pounds between them in 2019 dividends, with HSBC, the biggest payer, due to hand out $4.2 billion.

By Julien Ponthus and Thyagaraju Adinarayan